Raptors GM Masai Ujiri will be listening as trade deadline looms

Raptors guard DeMar DeRozan, representing the Eastern Conference, goes up for a layup over Western Conference centre Dwight Howard during the all-star game in New Orleans last night. (USA Today Sports/photo)

Masai Ujiri has always said he would let the players dictate which way he went with things and he’s not backing off that now.

That does not mean he definitely won’t be busy between now and Thursday’s NBA trade deadline, just that he’s not going to be out there seeking moves as hard as he would have been had the Raptors not got on a bit of a roll and shown their President and GM something over these last couple of months.

“I’ll be right here (waving his cellphone) waiting and we’ll see what happens,” he said of his plans between now and the trade deadline. “I never know what to expect. Sometimes it’s quiet until the last minute. Sometimes it’s busy. As far as our team, I think the team has played well. They have done well with the platform so keep trying to grow.

“These guys are taking the opportunity and I said we would give them the platform, and if they continue to grow we’ll see how we do but we haven’t done anything yet,” Ujiri cautioned. “I don’t want to call out the conference, I can’t do that, but it’s the measuring stick and I think we have to keep that in mind.”

As happy as he is with his team that reached the break at 28-24 after a 6-12 start, Ujiri knows they still have plenty of room to grow and for that reason he’s not ruling anyone on his roster completely untradeable, and that includes point guard Kyle Lowry, who he was asked about specifically.

“I hate to comment about any player in that way, but I think we are not good enough so you have to keep it open,” he said. “That’s the honest answer. These guys have done pretty good. I know we’ve won a couple of games but we haven’t done anything yet. We’ll keep trying to grow.”

Ujiri, though, singles out two reasons for the Raptors improved play since that season-altering trade on Dec. 8 that sent Rudy Gay, Quincy Acy and Aaron Gray to Sacramento and brought back four huge character players in John Salmons, Patrick Patterson, Greivis Vasquez and Chuck Hayes.

Ujiri used the word ‘feisty’ to describe both of them.

“When you do trades like that you try to build on as much as you can, like character, strong character and guys that are going to help the team,” Ujiri said. “We try to study, we’re not geniuses, you have to get lucky sometimes and I think we were lucky. It kind of came together in terms of chemistry. They play for themselves, they play hard and they compete. They go out there and fight for each other, they don’t give up. I think two things really help, the feistiness of Dwane’s defence I think helps and the feistiness of Kyle Lowry I think helps quite a bit and the other guys are equally feisty and they don’t give up, they play hard, they compete.”

But it would be a mistake to think that what the Raptors have accomplished to date — a first-place standing in the Atlantic and a top three spot in the Eastern Conference (as it stands now) — has changed Ujiri’s timetable in any way.

“On my side, no,” he said. “I think we always want to get better, we want to continue to grow. I think what (the trade) did for us is it kind of gave the young guys a good platform to grow, Jonas (Valanciunas), Terrence (Ross) , DeMar (DeRozan) and I think even (Patrick) Patterson, I can consider him a young power forward in the NBA at 24, he’s just finishing his rookie contract. It’s given them a good place to grow and that’s the way I look at it. We have plenty of work to do. I think they play hard, they compete. I think coach Casey has done an excellent job so we’ll see how it continues to grow.”

The timetable remains the same.

“I always said since I came in, the players will dictate where we go and the team will dictate where we go and that’s kind of how it’s been,” Ujiri said. “So they’re growing and you want it that way. When we go find players, these are the type of young players you want to find and we hope that we continue to draft well and find good young players and grow the team.”

MLSE MAKING ALL-STAR PLANS

A team of about a dozen employees of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment were here for the weekend taking in the festivities and getting an idea of what it will take two years from now when Toronto takes its turn playing host the NBA all-star festivities.

The early takeaway for the MLSE group, and it had a pretty good idea about this coming in, is the league is not looking for the Toronto event to be just like the New Orleans event or the Brooklyn/New York event or even the Houston event.

“The one thing we heard in this meeting with the league is they try to customize it for each city,” Dave Haggith, MLSE’s senior director of communications said. “They don’t want a cookie cutter event that just rolls in.”

And the Toronto group has no intention of being even remotely like any previous all-star game, although all of that is still very much in the planning stages.

“They want to highlight the best things in each city so for us it’s a blank canvas for us to do what we want to do,” Shannon-Hosford, MLSE’s vice president of Marketing and Communication said. “New Orleans wants to celebrate the characteristics they have. So we have to decide what is uniquely Canadian and what are the things we want to promote to the world.”

Hosford said that while the game will be played in Toronto it will be a celebration of all things Canadian.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to own being Canadian,” she said. “Yes, it’s going to be cold, so how do we embrace that instead of running away from it. How do we just take pride in being Canadian and showing the world how great Canada is. Obviously we have a lot of diversity, so some of the things we’ve talked about is how do we activate different communities, different basketball communities. I think that’s unique and something we can definitely build on.”

Next year’s all-star game will be shared by both Brooklyn and Manhattan before it makes its maiden voyage north of the 49th parallel in 2016.

Raptors GM Masai Ujiri will be listening as trade deadline looms

Masai Ujiri has always said he would let the players dictate which way he went with things and he’s not backing off that now.

That does not mean he definitely won’t be busy between now and Thursday’s NBA trade deadline, just that he’s not going to be out there seeking moves as hard as he would have been had the Raptors not got on a bit of a roll and shown their President and GM something over these last couple of months.

“I’ll be right here (waving his cellphone) waiting and we’ll see what happens,” he said of his plans between now and the trade deadline. “I never know what to expect. Sometimes it’s quiet until the last minute. Sometimes it’s busy. As far as our team, I think the team has played well. They have done well with the platform so keep trying to grow.